Maurice Sendak on Illustration

Last week, we said goodbye to Maurice Sendak. As a child and as an adult, I've always appreciated that Mr. Sendak never, ever, underestimated his audience. He expected children to read subtext and layers, to grasp and embrace story in a complex yet effortless way. In the below interview, he says as a writer for children,

"...you can count on an audience that is so intuitive by nature...they take it in like air."

Betsy Bird put together a round-up of Sendak tributes on her blog a Fuse #8 Production. You can listen to and read a number of past interviews with Sendak on Fresh Air and at the Horn Book. There are his recent, hilarious, outspoken interviews with Stephen Colbert (part one and part two).

The best tribute of all, of course, is simply to go pick up a Maurice Sendak book and read...take it in like air.

Maurice Sendak on Illustration

Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators

I met so many nice people at the NESCBWI conference this weekend, and am ready to get down to work (as soon as I catch up on my sleep)! Here are a few notes I took at the conference that struck me as being applicable to both storytelling and life:

-Part of growing up is aligning desire with actions...kids often say and do things that are the opposite of what they want (I'm pretty sure I still do this on a relatively regular basis!)

-Think: Does this FEED me or does it COST me?

-Instead of "what does my character want": "what does my character care about?"

-Write to your strengths, revise to your weakness.

-What would you do if you knew that failure was impossible?

Battle of the Kids' Books Begins Tomorrow

Are you ready? Check out the great Round One line up of contenders for the 2012 Battle of the Kid's Books. Plus, celebrity judges like Jeff Kinney (of Wimpy Kid fame, in case you live under a rock and had to be told), and Matt Phelan (one of my favorite contemporary illustrators), and SO MANY more!

Didn't I tell you this was going to be exciting?

Round One:
Match 1 (March 13, Judge Matt Phelan) Amelia Lost vs Anya's Ghost

Match 2 (March 14, Judge Gayle Forman) Between Shades of Gray vs Bootleg

Match 3 (March 15, Judge Sy Montgomery) The Cheshire Cheese Cat vs Chime

Match 4 (March 16, Judge Sara Zarr) Daughter of Smoke and Bone vs Dead End in Norvelt

Match 5 (March 19, Judge Barbara O'Connor) Drawing from Memory vs The Grand Plan to Fix Everything

Match 6 (March 20, Judge Sarah Weeks) Heart and Soul vs Inside Out and Back Again

Match 7 (March 21, Judge Lauren Myracle) Life: An Exploded Diagram vs A Monster Calls

Match 8 (March 22, Judge Jeff Kinney) Okay for Now vs Wonderstruck

Newbery, Caldecott, & Printz: "The Call"

Every year, I'm on pins and needles to find out who won the ALA awards. The Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz Awards are like the kidlit Oscars, and I'm the giggly fangirl who can't wait for all the celebrity gossip.

So you can imagine how much I loved Publishers Weekly for printing an article on where the winners were when they received "The Call." I love being privy to the details: Jack Gantos' brief hope that it wasn't going to be his mom on the other line, Chris Raschka's search for his lost cell phone, John Corey Whaley's shock when he received a second call.

And of course I have to hoot and holler for my favorites. Chris Raschka: Hooray! Two decades after its first publication, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop is still in my Top 10 picture books of all time.

If you need all the details, too, I recommend the Publisher's Weekly article:
Gantos, Raschka, Whaley: Where They Were When the Award Call Came

And the winners are...

Keeper and The Night-Blooming Cereus

Right now, I'm reading Kathi Appelt's new book, Keeper. So far, I haven't been completely sucked in like I was when reading The Underneath, but I'm only halfway through, so we'll see. One thing that stands out, though, is the way Ms. Appelt is able to capture a palpable sense of waiting. I put the in italics because it is not just your ho-hum pass-the-time kind of waiting. The whole book is infused with heavy anticipation, a quiet but persistent feeling that any moment now, some small, magical shift is going to change everything.

The perfect symbol of this waiting is the night-blooming cereus. Keeper's neighbor, Mr. Beauchamp, has a night-blooming cereus. This is a plant that blooms rarely, and only at night. In Kathi Appelt's novel, Mr. Beauchamp is waiting, waiting, for the plant to flower on the night of the blue moon.

So here's the truth. This is all a rambling excuse to write once again about how much I love Robert Hayden. Everytime I pick up Keeper, I want to pull his Collected Poems off the shelf and thumb through to "The Night-Blooming Cereus," a beautiful example of waiting for something magical to happen in the everyday. 

It's long, so I can't post the whole thing here, but check out these first few stanzas and then you'll have to go grab the book from your library (because the last stanza is one of my favorite stanzas of all time). Or better yet, buy the book...you'll want to have it handy for times like these. You may also be able to read the whole poem online at Google Books.

(Also, apologies to Mr. Hayden for the incorrect formatting. Blogger can't handle poetic indentations.)

The Night-Blooming Cereus (excerpt)
by Robert Hayden

And so for nights
we waited, hoping to see
the heavy bud
break into flower.

On its neck-like tube
hooking down from the edge
of the leaf-branch
nearly to the floor,

the bud packed
tight with its miracle swayed
stiffly on breaths
of air, moved

as though impelled
by stirrings within itself.
It repelled as much
as it fascinated me...

Frank Cottrell Boyce: Cosmic & Millions

Given my 'druthers, I prefer middle grade fiction to be laugh-out-loud hilarious. But I also want genuine, steal-your-heart characters, a thread of depth and emotion that's believable but doesn't hit you over the head, and a satisfying, sigh-worthy ending. While I'm at it, a classic case of mistaken identity doesn't hurt.

A tall order? Perhaps. But every so often, an author delivers, and that is why Frank Cottrell Boyce is my new middle grade obsession. Here are two books you really must read:


Cosmic is a story about Liam, a twelve-year-old boy who's hit a bit of a growth spurt. In fact, with the seven inches and facial hair he gained over the summer, most strangers think he's an adult. At first, this manifests itself in some funny episodes like being mistaken for a teacher and taking a sports car out for a test drive. But when Liam has a chance to take a special "thrill-ride" to outer space, that's when things get a little out of control. Cosmic is funny and clever and touching in all the best ways.


Millions (Frank Cottrell Boyce's first novel) is set in England, just seven days before the monetary system changed from pounds to Euros. Fourth-grader Damian is struggling to cope with the loss of his mother and he obsesses over the stories of Catholic saints, hoping that perhaps his mom has joined their ranks. One day, while he is in his homemade cardboard "hermitage," a bag of English pounds falls from the sky. Convinced that it is a message from God, Damian believes he must use the money for saintly purposes. His brother, Anthony, just wants to spend it. Either way, they only have seven days to figure out what to do with the cash before it becomes completely worthless. A beautiful, funny, and poignant story about brothers, family, and the true meaning of saintliness.

An interesting side note: I saw the movie version of Millions a few years ago and it turns out that Frank Cottrell Boyce actually wrote the screenplay before he wrote the book. The movie version was already in production while he was writing the novel and he says in an interview that walking around on the set helped him visualize the setting while he was writing.


Here's an interview with Frank Cottrell Boyce about Cosmic:


Also posted at ACLA Youth Services Blog.

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick: Chris Van Allsburg

Thanks to Fuse #8 it has come to my attention that there is a new Harris Burdick book coming this fall. Some of you may remember that Chris Van Allsburg's wordless The Mysteries of Harris Burdick is one of my all-time favorite books for kick-starting young imaginations.

It can also kick-start not-so-young imaginations, as it turns out. The new book, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, will feature stories inspired by the Harris Burdick illustrations. Check out the list of heavy-hitting contributing authors. Whooowie!

This inspired collection of short stories features many remarkable, best-selling authors in the worlds of both adult and children's literature: Sherman Alexie, M.T. Anderson, Kate DiCamillo, Cory Doctorow, Jules Feiffer, Stephen King, Tabitha King, Lois Lowry, Gregory Maguire, Walter Dean Myers, Linda Sue Park, Louis Sachar, Jon Scieszka, Lemony Snicket, and Chris Van Allsburg himself.

Find out more at Publisher's Weekly.

Jimi Sounds Like a Rainbow: Gary Golio

I'm excited to team up with fellow poet and former classmate, Kelley Beeson this month. Kelley works for the Allegheny County Library Association, and she's invited me to post a monthly book review at the ACLA Youth Services blog. So once a month, I'll be posting both at ACLA and at Please Come Flying, switching back and forth between middle grade and picture book reviews. What fun!

What better way to kick off a new partnership than with some good old fashioned rock 'n roll? I teach a series of songwriting workshops for the K-5 set, and I'm always looking for good picture books about music and musicians to use during our "Seal Pup" listening time. But a book about Jimi Hendrix? Isn't that a little intense? Of course the man was a creative genius, but how do you write truthfully about someone who suffered so intensely from drug abuse and addiction and present it in a way that is suitable for kindergartners?

In Jimi Sounds Like a Rainbow: A Story of the Young Jimi Hendrix, Golio strikes a good balance. The text focuses on Jimi's life as a child. We see how Jimi pays attention to the sounds all around him, experiments with instruments, and finds ways to play the rainbow of sounds that exist in his head.

In this way, the book reminds me quite a bit of Before John Was a Jazz Giant, a picture book biography of John Coltrane. Both authors do a terrific job of showing how a musician can find inspiration in the world around them. In Before John Was a Jazz Giant, John gathers inspiration from "the steam engines whistling past, Cousin Mary giggling at jitterbuggers, and Bojangles tap-dancing in the picture show."

In Jimi Sounds Like a Rainbow:

"With every sound, a color glowed in Jimi's mind.
Blue was the whoosh of cool water, splashing over rocks.
Orange and red, the crackling of a campfire.
Green, the rustle of a thousand leaves."

In both books, the musicians learn to bring the essence of those childhood sounds into the genius of their compositions. Golio writes:

"Like no one before him, Jimmy Hendrix taught his guitar to sing, scream, laugh, and cry. He learned to use it as an artist uses paint, creating new worlds with the colors of sounds."

What a beautiful description of the creative process!

Golio leaves Jimi's adult sadness for the end papers where it can be absorbed or not at will. He briefly and tastefully describes the tragedy of Jimi Hendrix's death and includes some age-appropriate Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services resources for further reading "in the spirit of recognizing that addiction is a treatable disease, and that deaths like Jimi's can be prevented." I appreciate that he does not gloss over the issue, nor does he hit us over the head with it.

I will admit that while Javaka Steptoe's colorful paint-on-plywood collages are interesting and full of texture and detail, I'm not immediately drawn to the illustrations. But I will definitely be using this book in my songwriting workshops. It's a keeper.

And because I can't resist a video link, here's Jimi Hendrix himself playing Voodoo Child live in 1969.



Also posted at ACLA Youth Services Blog.

Battle of the Kids' Books Big Kahuna Round: And the winner is...

It's a rainy, gray, hectic day here in Maine, so I will keep this post brief. Just one tiny little public service announcement:

The Battle of the Kids' Books victor was crowned today! The final three books to battle it out were

• The Ring of Solomon
• A Conspiracy of Kings
• Keeper

Can you guess who the winner is? Go read the results...

Battle of the Kids' Books 2011

I have fallen so far behind in my internet reading that I completely missed Round 1 of the School Library Journal's 2011 Battle of the Kids' Books! What travesty!

Deep into round two, there has of course been much excitement and upset. Two of my favorite books of the year were mercilessly booted after only *one* match! Seriously, people? The Dreamer lost to The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie, a non-fiction book about the history of Barbie. One Crazy Summer lost to a graphic novel version of The Odyssey.

I haven't read the Barbie history or the graphic novel, so I can't cry foul. Both are acclaimed to be excellent works in their own right. But what about the beautiful, poetic portrayal of young Pablo in The Dreamer? And the fascinating subject matter and honest characterization in One Crazy Summer? Argh! See what this silly game does to me? I'm all kerfluffled.

Two books that have been added to my to-read list after the first round:

The Cardturner by Louis Sachar. I love Louis Sachar, but was a little reluctant to pick up a book revolving around the game of bridge. However, the book has made it through two rounds with ease. I've been swayed.

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword by Barry Deutsch. Hereville lost the book battle in the first round, but a book with "Yet Another Troll-Fighting 11-Year-Old Orthodox Jewish Girl" on the front cover? I must read.

Okay, quit reading this and head over to The Battle of the Kids' Books before Round 2 is over already!

Grab Bag Friday: Splish Splash! Book Giveaway

Hooray! Intrepid illustrator Amy Schimler has a brand new book out. Splish Splash! is an interactive "touch-and-hear" board book all about the sounds of a river. As usual, Amy Schimler's illustrations are bursting with color and whimsy certain to delight readers young and old.

To make things even more exciting, Amy is hosting a book giveaway on her blog. Stop by Red Fish Circle before March 20th for a chance to win a hot-off-the-presses copy of your own!

Martin Luther King, Jr: I've Been to the Mountaintop

I've been reading a bit about Martin Luther King Jr's prophetic last speech, given April 3, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. It's so important to have heroes like Dr. King. After all the obstacles he came up against, all the resistance, all the threats, he stood strong. On what would be his last night, when he was feeling too ill to speak, he still came up to that microphone to do what he did best. He strengthened others through his words. He gave them power. He was fearless so they could be fearless.

You can read the entire Mountaintop speech at American RadioWorks.

In honor of the day, here are a couple reviews of two excellent children's books about civil rights:

• Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice 
• Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don't You Get Weary

The final words from Dr. King's Mountaintop speech:

Philip and Erin Stead: A Sick Day for Amos McGee

There's a reason A Sick Day for Amos McGee is showing up on all the best-of-the-best picture book lists this year (including the New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2010). I just picked this up for one of my nieces, and it is endearing to the nth degree.

Amos McGee takes good care of the animals at the zoo. He takes time to sit with the shy penguin and wipe the rhino's constantly runny nose. So one day, when Amos McGee has to stay home sick, the animals decide to come to his house and take care of him instead.

I first read about Amos on Betsy Bird's Fuse #8 blog, where she wrote:

Could have been written last year, ten years ago, or fifty. Doesn’t matter because the word “timeless” may as well be stamped all over each and every doggone page.

All true. The pencil illustrations are filled with soft tones of yellow and pink, the story is sweet and charming and absolutely timeless. Usually when one of my nieces or nephews gets sick with the flu, or has to get tonsils removed, my go-to book is Many Moons by James Thurber. Now I have a new book to add to the sick-day list.

A couple fun links:
Philip Stead's Online Portfolio
Erin Stead's Blog

Lisbeth Zwerger: Swan Lake

Instead of writing Monday's blog post, Kevin and I were busy working on a 1500-word treatise/photo essay for my niece's grade school Flat Stanley project. (Okay, we were supposed to send a postcard, but this is what you get when you send a project like that to a couple of writers!)

So to make up for missing a post about books this week, I thought I'd do double duty today and write about books and music. I was in our lovely downtown bookstore this weekend and was lucky enough to come across Lisbeth Zwerger's Swan Lake on the sale shelf.

Zwerger's retelling of Tchaikovsky's ballet is beautiful in every way. The story of a woman who is transformed into a swan by an evil sorceror is simply told, and Zwerger's paintings are set in muted blues and grays that bring out the shroud of mystery that surrounds the tale.

The illustration of the Swan Queen on the cover is particularly stunning. I wish you could see it better here, but the way the cuff of the sleeve makes her hand look like a swan and the dress feathers out just a little at the bottom...it's genius. There's another painting that shows the transformation of the girls into swans, and it is so odd and weirdly beautiful, it made me wonder why I never thought more carefully about the strangeness of that transformation--how awkward and bizarre it would actually be.

Knowing the story, I was surprised to find a happy ending on the last page, but it turns out Zwerger did not simply tack that on. She goes on to explain that Tchaikovsky's original production of Swan Lake in 1877 did indeed have a happy ending. The production was terribly received. Critics thought the story was stupid and the music was too noisy. When the ballet was re-staged in the early 1890's, the ending was rewritten as a tragedy.

One of the nice details of the book is that a small bit of the musical score is included at the top of each page. Here's the theme, played by the New York Philharmonic:

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake

Blog Rerun: Shaun Tan, The Arrival

I'm taking a few days off from my blog to enjoy a little Thanksgiving break with family. In the meantime, here's a blog rerun of Shaun Tan's breathtaking graphic novel. The Arrival was my choice for this month's Songwriting for Kids Book Club, so I thought it would be a good rerun. Hope you enjoy!

Shaun Tan: The Arrival (originally posted November 26, 2007)

First: Robert's Snow Auction #2 begins today! Check the sidebar to the right for a list of Auction #2 illustrators and links to their snowflake features.

Now, enough Robert's Snow illustrators mentioned Shaun Tan in their interviews that I finally picked up a copy of his new graphic novel The Arrival. And I have to say, hands down, it is *worth* all the buzz.

The Arrival is a story about immigration, and belonging, and finding a new home. The main character leaves his family, and takes a long journey to a strange land in the hopes of finding a better life for his family. This is a story we all know. In America, at least, there have been countless re-tellings of Ellis Island and other immigration stories in movies, books, plays, songs...the list goes on and on. Immigration is a huge part of our American history and mythology. But I've never seen the story told quite like this.

Shaun Tan grew up in Perth, Australia, and is half-Chinese. His father came to Australia from Malaysia to study architecture. Themes of immigration and belonging and home have been a part of his consciousness as long as he can remember. When he began The Arrival, he intended it to be a short picture book for children. Instead, it became a graphic novel that took five years to create, and it speaks to people of all ages, all nationalities, all walks of life.

The Arrival is completely wordless. The pictures tell the story, in a frame-by-frame style that is more reminiscent of film than of comic books. And because there are no words, we are brought in to the story in a much more personal way. The strange land that he travels to would be strange to anyone...it is a land of Shaun Tan's invention with tadpole-like creatures that emerge from pots and strange birds that unfold and fly vertically in the sky. Modes of transportation, food, even the buildings are all so odd that the reader feels just as disoriented as the traveler.

This is the genius of this book. When you are reading it, you can't help but begin to understand what it might be like to leave everything behind and start new. The excitement, the fear, the hope. It's all there. Here's an excerpt from an article Shaun Tan wrote about the book:

One of the great powers of storytelling is that it invites us to walk in other people’s shoes for a while, but perhaps even more importantly, it invites us to contemplate our own shoes also. We might do well to think of ourselves as possible strangers in our own strange land. What conclusions we draw from this are unlikely to be easily summarised, all the more reason to think further on the connections between people and places, and what we might mean when we talk about ‘belonging’.

Here is a page from Shaun Tan's website (scroll down to see many images from the book, and scroll down even further for Shaun Tan's comments about the book).

Here is a terrific interview with Shaun Tan from Fuse #8 (most likely the first place I read about the book when it came out in February).

Three New Upstart Crow Books

Last week, I finished a major revision of my novel and sent the last little edits off to my agent (woohoo!). So this weekend, I rewarded myself by going out for ice cream with Kevin and catching up a bit on my to-read shelf. Since I'm so excited to get to the stage in my book where my agent now has the reins, I thought I'd highlight three books written by my "agent siblings" that came out this summer:

The Shadows (The Books of Elsewhere, Vol. 1) 
by Jacqueline West
I loved this and am already thinking about which niece to send it to first. Ordinary Olive moves to a creaky, old Victorian house and finds herself caught up in an extraordinary mission to uncover the mystery of her new home's unusual paintings. Very fun and just the right amount of spooky. (For ages 8-12ish)

The Deathday Letter 
by Shaun David Hutchinson 
When 15-year-old Ollie receives his "deathday letter" he has to decide how he wants to spend the last 24 hours of his life. Kevin and I both read this one and laughed out loud at how realistically uncensored Ollie's teenage brain is (girls and crude euphemisms and puns are definitely in the forefront of his mind). (For teen readers)

Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation 
by Matt Myklusch
I just finished this one up last night. Orphan Jack Blank knows nothing about his past and has to survive an adventure in another world to find out who he is. The Imagine Nation is filled with robo-zombies, ninjas, androids, and superheroes of every size and shape. Not to mention scores of cool gizmos and gadgets, and of course, evil villains...one surprising villain in particular throws Jack's whole world into serious tumult. (For ages 8-12ish)

Boston Globe Horn Book Awards & Colloquium

This weekend, I was lucky enough to attend the Boston Globe Horn Book Awards Ceremony and the following day-long colloquium at Simmons College. Here were the highlights for me:

Elizabeth Partridge gave a fascinating talk about her book Marching For Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don't You Grow Weary. She also gave a very cool presentation about Google Lit Trips. If you have Google Earth installed on your computer (it's easy to do), you can download the Marching for Freedom file and take an interactive journey following the exact path the marchers took from Selma to Birmingham. Along the way, Ms. Partridge has embedded a treasure trove of information, music, audio clips from speeches, and photographs to help you delve deeper into the story. There are Google Lit Trips for everything from The Grapes of Wrath to The Kite Runner and Make Way for Ducklings. How cool is that?

Rebecca Stead and her editor, Wendy Lamb, gave a great panel presentation about the collaborative nature of the author-editor relationship. They told a story about their struggles in finding the perfect title for When You Reach Me (the title they originally wanted, "You Are Here," was being used by another book coming out at the same time). And Rebecca Stead did an excellent every-day time travel experiment in her acceptance speech as she read her speech from two different points of view: the Rebecca Stead writing the speech in September, and the point of view of the Rebecca Stead reading the speech in October.

Peter Sis was just as charming, self-deprecating, and intelligent as I imagined he would be. Both his acceptance speech and his contributions to the picture book panel discussion were insightful and inspirational. All of the speeches of the evening will be up online eventually, but if you'd like to get a taste, here is the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award speech Peter Sis gave a couple years ago when he won for his non-fiction book The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain (Caldecott Honor Book). If you prefer to read along, here is the text. And if you like video, it's a little slow, but you *can* watch it. Peter Sis is about 12 minutes in.

Tough Issues in KidLit

I've been following two very interesting, worthwhile discussions in the kidlit blogosphere today. Both have been discussed before but deserve revisiting from time to time:

#1: What to Do About Classic Children's Books that are Racist?
Monica Edinger (and Phil Nel via link) tackle the issue of how to deal with racism in classic children's literature. Should we forbid kids to read the original versions of well-loved books like Mary Poppins or Dr. Doolittle because of the obvious and offensive racism that exists in the novels? Should we allow them to read only the "updated" versions of these texts? Or allow them to read the originals, but only with supervision and discussion? Very tricky. Very interesting. Very thoughtful insights by Edinger, Nel, and the many folks who have commented on their posts.

#2: What Is the Opposite of "Clean"?
Young Adult author Jo Knowles discusses the problem of classifying books that don't contain sex or swears as "clean." She writes, "I know the people who make "CLEAN BOOKS" lists are well intentioned. This is not an attack or accusation. It's a plea for all of us to think about the potential power of our words." There are many amazing, important books for children and teens that deal with tough issues, and I agree that it can be dangerous to think of these books as lesser because a swear word or difficult content prevent them from showing up on a "clean books" list. It's even more dangerous to start thinking of them, as Knowles notes, as the opposite of "clean." Again, her blog post as well as the insightful comments give much food for thought.